Southpaw

Table of Contents

 

 

Jimmy pumped his fist toward his chest and took the throw from Jared. He squinted at the runner on third with a defiant glare. Blue gave the same look back. He took a half-step toward home plate, crouched low and ready to run.

Union City’s cleanup hitter stepped in. He was a strong kid and had twice sent Willie back to the fence in center for long fly-outs. He clearly had the power to hit one out of the park.

Strike one.

Ball one.

Ball two.

Strike two.

Jimmy squeezed the ball and wiped his face with his mitt. Everyone in the park was standing now. His mouth was dry.

This was the pitch. This would do it. As he brought the ball forward he felt it slip slightly from his fingers, just enough to make his stomach sink.

It was low, it was outside, and it was spinning away from Jared....

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First published in the United States of America by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006 Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

 

Copyright © Rich Wallace, 2006 All rights reserved

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eISBN : 978-1-101-17510-1

 

 

 

 

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J
immy stepped off the mound and jogged toward the dugout, being careful not to step on the first-base line. That’d be bad luck. He was excited now. He’d done well on this first afternoon of tryouts.

The day was overcast and cool, and a few small patches of snow were still melting in the shady spots near the left-field fence. But the baseball diamond was clear and mostly dry. A trickle of sweat ran from Jimmy’s unruly hair onto his cheek. He quickly wiped it away.

The muscular kid that Jimmy had just struck out was frowning as he put his bat in the rack. “What was your name again?” the kid asked.

Jimmy tossed his mitt onto the rickety wooden bench and smiled. Not many kids had bothered talking to him since his arrival in town. “Jimmy Fleming,” he said eagerly. “My friends back home call me Flem.”

The kid made a sour face and said, “Flem?” He thought for a second, squinting and giving the lanky newcomer a good looking-over. “I don’t know where ‘back home’ is, but to me phlegm is something you hack up and spit out.” And he did just that to demonstrate.

“Home is Pennsylvania. And yeah, I’ve heard all the jokes,” Jimmy said, looking away. “They never bothered me.”

The other kid shrugged. “I’m Spencer Lewis,” he said, not smiling. “But you already knew that.”

“I did?”

“You ought to.”

Jimmy raised his eyebrows. “That so?”

“Starting shortstop. Leadoff hitter.”

“Wow,” Jimmy said with a lot of sarcasm. This kid seemed pretty full of himself. Jimmy decided to needle him a bit. “So I struck out a big star, huh?”

Spencer winced but gave a half-smile. “I ain’t hearing that noise,” he said. “Everybody knows the pitchers are ahead of the hitters in March. It might take me a minute to get used to a southpaw like you, with that weird left-handed delivery, but tomorrow will be different.”

The coach had said there’d be a full week of tryouts before he cut the roster to eighteen players. Jimmy had counted twenty-nine out for the squad.

“The team’s pretty well set, you know,” Spencer said. “Especially my boys on the pitching staff.”

“I think I got a shot,” Jimmy replied. He could see that Spencer was going to keep busting his chops, letting him know he was an outsider.

“You got okay stuff. We might be able to use you some in relief.”

Jimmy gave Spencer a mean look. “I guess the coaches’ll decide that, won’t they?”

Spencer shrugged. “Yeah. But they want guys who are gonna fit in, Flem. People who know the score.”

“I been pitching for four years,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, in the sticks.”

“Sticks? Where’d you find a word like that? 1920?”

“What do you call it?”

“Home.”

“Call it whatever you want,” Spencer said. “All I’m saying is there’s a big difference between Hudson City and cow country.”

That stung a little. There actually had been a dairy farm about two hundred yards from the Flemings’ house in Pennsylvania. Jimmy’s mother owned a horse that she boarded there.

Jimmy just smiled, went into a batting stance, and gave a gentle swing. “Strike three,” he said.

“Like I was saying, I ain’t used to lefties right now.”

“And like I said, I think I got a shot. Besides, you ever heard of Christy Mathewson?” he asked, referring to the Hall of Fame pitcher who had grown up in northeastern Pennsylvania.

“Yeah. So?”

“Where do you think he’s from?”

Spencer laughed. “That was, like, forever and two days ago, Flem.”

Head Coach Wimmer walked over and cleared his throat. He was old and paunchy and had been leading the Hudson City Middle School seventh-grade team for more than thirty years. “All right, boys,” he said, eyeing the bunch. “Pretty good for a first day. You’re not quite ready for Yankee Stadium, but we’ll whip you into shape.

“Go on home, lay off the ice cream, and be back here after school tomorrow.” Coach took off his cap and rubbed his big, bald head. His pink ears stuck out like rounded fins. “And tuck in those shirts; probably be some Major League scouts hanging around looking for prospects. Don’t want them to think I run a sloppy ship.”

Jimmy laughed with the rest of them, then left the dugout and headed for home, just a short block down 15th Street to the Boulevard.

It still seemed strange to be walking these streets, so noisy and busy with traffic. It had only been a month since he and his dad moved here, taking a second-story apartment above the Lindo
Música Internacional
store. So many things had changed so quickly.

His parents’ divorce hadn’t been such a surprise; he’d figured it was coming. But he never thought his dad would be leaving Sturbridge, Pennsylvania, to take a job in Jersey City. So Jimmy was left with the biggest decision of his life: Stay with his mother or leave with his dad, right in the middle of seventh grade.

And here he was, suddenly a city dweller, stuck in that urban stretch of North Jersey between the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, an arm’s reach across the Hudson River from the New York City skyline. In a town where half the signs were in Spanish and white kids like him were a minority.

He needed to make the school baseball team. When he gripped that ball this afternoon, pushed back his cap and peered in at the catcher, he’d finally felt at home for a few minutes. When he let loose with that wide overhand delivery and sent the ball zipping toward the plate for the first time this season, he’d felt a burden lifting.

But maybe Spencer was right. Jimmy had been on enough sports teams to know that the coaches often did have their rosters picked way in advance, with few real opportunities for a newcomer to fit in. He’d have to do a lot better than the established players to secure a place on the team.

J
immy always got home before his father—who commuted by bus to Jersey City—so he’d do his homework and watch TV or read sports magazines and comic books. Dad would get home at about six o’clock and make dinner; he was a good cook and could whip up some chicken and vegetables in a hurry. Then they’d hang out in the sparsely furnished apartment till bedtime.

Once a week or so they’d go to the coin laundry down the street to wash their clothes. And on Thursdays they’d walk a couple of blocks and get Chinese or Mexican food in cardboard containers to go.

The apartment was narrow and long, only about eighteen feet wide. There were two front windows looking out over the Boulevard, with the fire escape zigzagging down the front of the building. Jimmy liked to sit in the living room and watch the traffic on the street while his dad watched TV.

“Hey, Jim, watch this,” Dad said, pointing the remote control toward the screen. “This Mets pitcher has the same delivery you’ve got, but he’s smoother, see. You watching?”

Jimmy had been watching passengers unloading from a New Jersey Transit bus. He turned toward the TV and nodded. “He’s taller, too.”

“Well, yeah, he’s an adult. But he’s built like you, all arms and legs. And he’s a lefty, too. But see how he gets himself planted after the pitch, ready in case the ball gets smacked right back to him? You come down off balance. You gotta work on that.”

“I know.”

Lean and limber like Jimmy, Dad was built like a first baseman or a hurdler, and he tried to be both at one time or another back in high school.

But he hadn’t had much success at either. It was no secret that he’d wanted to be a star pitcher. Or that now he wanted Jimmy to be.

Between pitches of the Mets game, Dad flipped over to the Yankees. It was still spring training for the pros, but there were games on every night. Mr. Fleming usually watched two games at once. “You can see almost every pitch if you time it right,” he’d say.

The only frustration was the volume. He’d discovered that 18 was the right volume for the Mets games, but that was too loud when he switched channels to the Yankees. He’d click it down to 16, but that seemed a little too soft. The perfect volume for the Yankees’ channel was 17, but he’d never leave it at an odd number like that. So he lived with it at 18, despite the discomfort of the slightly-too-high volume.